The Fort (2 page)

“I know. I won’t.” Tim thought about asking a question about Uncle Mike, steal some cool factoid about his ever-smiling mystery uncle, but decided to change the subject instead. “How much longer do you think the patio is going to take?”

“It’s still June, right?”

“Yep.”

“Longer than June.”

“I’ll get a shovel,” said Tim as he stood to walk around the house. He couldn’t see it, but behind him, his dad was smiling.

The gravel seemed almost magical: no matter how much of it Tim and his dad moved, the pile always seemed to be the same size. Tim mentioned this to his dad, saying that he was pretty sure they were stuck in a time warp. His dad didn’t respond, and Tim took that as an agreement that yes, they had been abducted by some alien entity that loved to watch men move wheelbarrows full of stone. Finally, after about an hour and six loads of pea gravel, Tim’s mother stuck her head out the front door of their ranch-style house with an announcement that dinner was done.

“All right,” said Stan. “We’ll be right in. Go wash up, buckaroo. I’ll dump this last load.”

Tim did not need to be told twice. He put the shovel back in the vertical rack where the yard tools were kept, then ran inside to wash his hands in the kitchen sink. It was hot in the house. Bearable due to a brilliantly devised series of fans set up by his mom every year, but still hot. Tim walked through the kitchen and sat at the dining room table, across from a furious-looking Becca.

“What’s shakin’, Bacon?” Tim asked his sister, who stole a glance at their mom in the kitchen, saw that she was busy doing something, and flipped her younger brother the bird. Bacon was an old nickname for Becca; a very young Tim had called her Beccan for several months, and their parents had found it hilarious. Becca had too, until a few months ago. Now, Tim said it either to annoy her or as a genuine mistake of habit.

A few moments later Stan entered the kitchen, washed his hands, and sat at the table with his children. Tammy was close behind, with an enormous bowl of salad.

“I don’t want to hear it,” she said as she set the bowl down in the center of the table. “It’s too hot to cook anything in here, and until that patio’s done, your father can’t grill. There’s some incentive for you, Stan. As soon as it’s done we can have some steaks.”

“And if I say I like salad and no longer want to grill, thus meaning I no longer require a patio, can we leave it as is?” He said this slowly, stealing looks at his children. Becca was even smiling, despite herself.

“Trust me, Stanley,” Tammy said just as slowly, but with a wicked smile, “you want to have a patio. Especially now that you’ve started. Besides, I saw you and Tim working out there—you’re at least halfway done.”

“Half of half, maybe,” said Stan, piling his plate high with Caesar salad. “There’s still a long way to go.”

“Dad, can I go to a movie?” Becca asked in a sweet voice, but before he could answer, Mom broke in: “I said you may ask your father after dinner.”

“What movie?” he asked.

“Why does that matter?”

Tim’s eyes were already darting between the participants of what was likely to be a violent but short-lived skirmish.

“Tell him,” said Tammy. “Then tell him who else is going.” She was smiling again, even more evilly, Tim noted, than when Dad had jokingly suggested that the patio project go on hiatus.

“
Full Metal Jacket
and
The Untouchables
, at the drive-in,” Becca sighed, eyes focused on her still-empty plate. “And a bunch of people are going. Jammi, Molly, Tara, Tracy, Stacey—lots of people. It’s going to be cool.”

“Tell him who else,” cooed Tammy, between bites of salad. “Because as much as I hate the idea of you seeing a couple of R-rated movies with all of your polite, well-mannered, and utterly
gracious girlfriends, all of whom I’m sure are saving themselves for marriage, I really love the idea of that deadbeat—”

“He is not a deadbeat!” Becca nearly shouted. “Tyler is cool, and didn’t even ask me to go. He’s just going to be there, it’s not like it’s a date or anything.”

“Which is good,” snapped Tammy. Tim forced himself not to smile as he ate. “Because as it has been made quite clear to you on numerous occasions, you are not going to be dating anyone. Not Tyler Cranston, not Harrison Ford, not anybody.”

“Heard some great news, Mom,” snapped Becca in an exact replica of her mom’s tone. “It is now the 1980s, and
everyone
is dating. Even babies like Tim go on dates if they’re not too ugly, or busy playing with their loser buddies.”

“Twelve-year-olds are dating?” Tim asked. That was news to him.

His question was ignored, however, as his dad stood, dumped salad on his daughter’s plate, and sat back down. “Becca, eat.” To demonstrate, he stuffed a forkful of salad between his lips, chewed, and continued. “And she did say it wasn’t a date, Tam.”

Tammy rolled her eyes at her husband, who pretended not to notice. “So if it’s not a date, what is it?”

“A gathering of friends,” said Becca, her voice all but dead.

“And will this gathering of friends be consuming alcohol or smoking pot?”

Becca rolled her eyes. “None of my friends do that. They’re not idiots. Besides, Tyler has to stay away from all that stuff, or he could lose eligibility for football. Even the people that do that stuff don’t do it around him, just because it wouldn’t be fair for him to lose his chance at a letter.”

“When would you be arriving home?” Stan asked.

“When the second movie is done.”

Stan Benchley made the sound of a buzzer going off. “Not good enough,” he said, pointing at a clock that was hanging on the wall over Becca’s head. “Those run on hours and minutes, not movies. When does this all start?”

“Seven thirty.”

“Who’s driving?”

“Jammi.”

“She has her license?”

“Got held back in first grade because she needed glasses and they didn’t figure it out until too late.” Becca chuckled into her fist. “They thought she was retarded.”

“All right,” said Stan, between bites. “Mom gets last approval on clothing and makeup; you’re home not one second after my clock, not yours, says midnight; and you make good choices. You were raised right. Don’t make me into a bad guy for letting you do something a little grown up.”

Becca shrieked, and Tim watched his dad ignore a positively evil look from his mom. “Thanks, Daddy, I’ll be good, I promise.”

“You better be,” said Tammy somberly. “I feel like having wine. Tim, would you do me the honor?”

“
Oui, madame
.” Tim jumped out of his chair and headed for the pantry. He had been taught how to work a corkscrew only a few months ago.
Sweet.

3

Hooper sang as he showered. He started—loudly—with the national anthem, and then switched it up to the theme from
Cheers
. He had a good singing voice, but it wasn’t something that anyone knew about, because it was something he was almost, but not quite, embarrassed of. The water slowly began to turn from hot to cold, and Hooper shut it off, then stood in the shower to enjoy a final moment of warmth from the steam. It was good to be clean. He stepped out of the shower, grabbed a towel, and quickly ran it over his body. Not as taut as it had been in the shit back in the day, but still, not terrible.

Once he was mostly dry, Hooper walked naked to the bedroom, giving himself a look in the mirror, and feeling a stirring in his loins at the sight.
I look good.
Looking good was important, that was what women liked, and being liked by women was very important. Having a sense of humor was good too, but Hooper had never felt very confident in that aspect of his personality, almost like he had to force himself to even fake being funny, and still wasn’t very good at it. Still, the kind of woman Hooper liked was the kind you paid to have a good time, and Hooper figured that if they had to pretend to laugh at his jokes, it was still lucky
for them to be with such a good-looking guy. His mom had always said he would grow up to be a handsome man, and she was right.

Hooper got dressed slowly—bright blue briefs, a tight black T-shirt, and jeans. He slid on a pair of cowboy boots, no socks, and then pushed a snub-nosed .38 into his pants pocket. He practiced drawing the gun a few times, sliding it in and out of his jeans to make sure it wouldn’t get hung up on anything if he needed it quickly. It passed the test well, as he’d figured it would. He’d had the hammer bobbed a few years back, and had replaced the factory rubber grip with a smooth faux-pearl one. The grips made the revolver almost too slick, especially when shooting, but Hooper didn’t figure he’d need to do any shooting tonight. Usually the knife, a KA-BAR just like he’d had in Nam, was enough, if it came to that. He slid the sheathed blade into his boot, and did a little dance as he left the bedroom.

Hooper walked into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of milk from the half gallon in the fridge. He drank it quickly, then placed the glass in the sink and rinsed it out; the last thing he needed was flies. Hooper kept the house immaculately clean, everything in its place. It was how his mom had raised him, and since this was her old house, it was only fair to honor her memory by keeping it the way it had been when she was alive. Hooper checked his watch. It would be dark soon, and time to leave.

Hooper walked from the kitchen, thinking, like he always did, about Amy, his little sister. She’d disappeared when he was in Vietnam, when she was just sixteen years old. He had some theories about where she might have gone, and why she would have left, but he really wanted to ask her himself, find out why she’d wanted to do something so hard on their mom. It just wasn’t a fair thing to do. Hooper could remember Amy like it was yesterday. He’d slowly watched her develop, and he could remember the smell of her hair like his nose was buried in it right now.

There were a lot of girls out there who looked like Amy, but Hooper was pretty particular. Usually, he’d cruise up and down
Division Avenue, heading south and looking at all of the working girls. It was normal not to see a girl who looked like her, and on those nights, Hooper would pick one of the other girls and fuck her in his car, then drive her to where she asked him to. Those girls never saw the pistol, or the knife. The Amy look-alikes got a different sort of treatment. Hooper liked to rape them at knifepoint, sometimes at the drive-in, sometimes other places on the north end of town—he wasn’t too particular about that part. While he raped the Amys, he always asked why they had left, and if they knew how much they’d hurt Mom. None of them ever knew the answer to either question.

When he was done, he drove the women to Riverside Park. Usually, by about that point he would start to realize just how much they didn’t look like Amy, how they couldn’t possibly be Amy. By the time he would get to the park he would be furious, and the usual pathetic crying didn’t help at all. Hooper had done the same thing fourteen times, finishing by stabbing the fake Amy once through the liver with the KA-BAR, and then choking them into silence. The bodies were found by the police, and usually made the news. No one was looking too hard—after all, they were just prostitutes, street trash not worth much more than a dog or a cat. Hooper smiled. He probably wouldn’t find Amy tonight, but he could sure as hell go looking, and have a nice time either way.

4

Scott’s mom had to work late on Mondays, so he and his stepdad, Carl, ate cold leftover pizza from the fridge, neither of them speaking as the meal was slowly consumed. The TV spoke for them. The news was on, and once again, the talking heads were arguing over whether or not the United States should retaliate further against Iraq for its missile attack on the USS
Stark
in May. Thirty-seven sailors had been killed, and apparently that was enough for the ‘nuclear’ word to be used.

“They should do it,” said Carl. “Fuck it. Turn the goddamn desert to glass, then send a couple up for the gooks and Russians. Get this Cold War hot, and let God figure it out.”

Scott knew better than to refute his stepdad, or to even bother trying to argue an alternative viewpoint. Carl Andrews had been living with them since Scott was six, two years after Scott’s dad had boarded his pickup truck, gone to work, and never come back. Scott had received a Christmas card a few years later, but he had just thrown it away. Though he wasn’t the biggest Carl fan, Carl was around, and was promising to take him deer hunting for the first time when Scott turned sixteen. Besides, Scott figured his mother, Beth, could do worse than the Vietnam vet, who was
currently employed as a tool-and-die engineer on the south end of town. He rarely drank, never to excess, and Scott’s mom at least seemed happy with him. Still, having a dad who just up and left one day can leave a hell of a mark, and Scott could still feel the sting of it.

“Why don’t you get off your butt,” said Carl, making Scott jump, “see if the Tigs are on yet. I’ve had enough of this depressing crap. Reminds me way too much of the buildup to Nam. At least we finally did something there, when they let us, that is.”